johnstevengurney

 Fuzzy Baseball #3: R.B.I. Hitters

It looks like I haven’t posted anything here in almost 4 years (I thought it was longer!) so I’ll try to catch up, a little bit at a time. Since my last post I’ve created two more Fuzzy Baseball books. Fuzzy Baseball #3: R.B.I. Robots and Fuzzy Baseball #4: DiNO Hitters, and Fuzzy Baseball Triple Play, which consists of books #1-3. And, I just delivered all of the artwork to Papercutz for Fuzzy Baseball #5: Fuzzy BaseBALLoween, which is due to be published in August of 2023. I’ll take this opportunity to write a little bit about R.B.I. Robots.

I wanted the Fuzzies to play a team full of robots, the Geartown Clankees. Designing the characters was particularly challenging. Typically, our image of a robot is a machine made to look human. But in the “universe” of Fuzzy Baseball, all of the characters are anthropomorphic (human-looking) animals, so the robots in the story need to look like mechanical anthropomorphic animals, rather than mechanical humans. And if that wasn’t complicated enough, when the Clankees arrive they are wearing animal disguises, to try to hide their robot identities. So, I needed to design the characters and their disguises. 

Soon after the game begins it is revealed that the Clankees are robots. The Fuzzies are concerned that it won’t be a fair game because the robots will be too powerful. The robots explain that they are calibrated so that they can play as only well as organic life forms… but no better. 

After the umps consult the rule book (there are no rules against robots) it is determined that the game can continue, but the robots are not allowed to recharge during the game. The Fuzzies realize that if they just keep playing their best they can outlast the robots and win.

One of the challenges I have with this series is that I don’t want to always make the opposing team the villains. These robots are very kind. They are playing baseball to experience the joy and comradery of teamwork. But, if it’s not a “Good Guys versus Bad Guys” situation I still need to give the readers something to care about. I decided that Blossom Honey-Possum would have an irrational,  lifelong fear of robots. Manager Bo Grizzley lets her sit out the game, but her services might be needed if they go into extra innings (spoiler alert: they do… 38!).

Another twist is that Hammy Sosa is trying to plug his own graphic novel, Pigtown Detective. It’s an action packed story about a hard-boiled detective named Spam Spade. The reader gets a few pages of this pretend graphic novel interspersed within the pages of R.B.I. Robots.

A spread from Pigtown Detective

Fuzzy Baseball #3: R.B.I. Robots is published by Papercutz and is available from Amazon, or from your favorite local bookstore.